Jaeger shook his head in frustration. God, but this woman was trying. Yet after her mid-air performance with the knife, he was beginning to doubt whether she was Smithy’s murderer after all. It had been the perfect opportunity for her to slip her blade into Jaeger and kill him, and yet she hadn’t.
No harm in testing her further, though, Jaeger reflected. ‘There is maybe a way to get us out of this.’ He gestured at the tangled mess of their parachutes in the canopy. ‘But first I’m gonna need that knife of yours.’
He had his own blade strapped to his person. It was the Gerber knife that Raff had given him in Bioko. It had a special meaning for him now, for it was the blade with which he’d saved his good friend’s life. He wore it in a sheath slung diagonally across his chest. But he wanted to see if Narov would willingly hand over the weapon that had so nearly sliced his guts out.
She didn’t so much as hesitate. ‘My knife? But don’t drop it. It’s an old friend.’ She reached for the long blade, unclipped it, took the point in her hand and launched it across the short distance between them.
‘Catch,’ she called, as it flashed through the sunlight and the shadows.
The knife that Jaeger caught looked strangely familiar. For a moment he turned it over in his hands, the slender seven-inch tapered stiletto blade glinting in the sunlight. There was no doubt about it: it was similar to the one lying in Grandpa Ted’s trunk, back in Jaeger’s Wardour Castle apartment.
When Jaeger had turned sixteen, his grandfather had allowed him to unsheathe that knife, while the two of them puffed away contentedly on his pipe. The smoky, aromatic scent came back to Jaeger now, as did the name of the knife: it was stamped on the dagger’s hilt.
He checked Narov’s blade, then glanced up at her appraisingly. ‘Nice. A Fairbairn–Sykes fighting knife. Second World War vintage, if I’m not mistaken.’
‘It is.’ Narov shrugged. ‘As you SAS proved back then, very good for killing Germans.’
Jaeger eyed her for a long moment. ‘You think we’ll be killing Germans? On this expedition?’
Narov’s answer – thrown back at him defiantly – echoed Great Uncle Joe’s dark words, and it was uttered in what sounded like fluent German: ‘Denn heute gehort uns Deutschland, und morgen die ganze Welt.’ Today Germany belongs to us: tomorrow, the entire world.
‘You know, it’s unlikely there are going to be any left alive on that aircraft.’ A hint of sarcasm had crept into Jaeger’s tone. ‘After seventy-odd years in the depths of the Amazon – I’d say next to impossible.’
‘Schwachkopf!’ – idiot! Narov glared at him. ‘You think I don’t know that? Why not do something useful, Mr Expedition Leader, and get us out of this mess you got us into?’
28
Jaeger outlined to Narov what he had in mind.
The emergency chute that Narov had been forced to pull was a smaller, less substantial piece of kit than his own BT80. It looked to have been badly torn when she ploughed into the treetops, which was why Jaeger proposed getting them stabilised under both canopies, forming one strong point from which they could lower themselves to the ground.
After he was done explaining, they proceeded to cut their rucksacks free, which until now had been left hanging suspended on the lines below. The heavy packs crashed through the layers of vegetation, each landing with a clearly audible thud on the forest floor far below. There was no way to complete the series of manoeuvres that he had in mind with thirty-five kilos of kit hanging on a line below their feet.
Next he got Narov to swing towards him, and he did likewise, each using their canopy like an anchor. With arms gripping the lines above, they twisted this way and that, until each was able to grab for the other at the furthest reach of their pendulum-like oscillation.
Jaeger’s legs felt for Narov’s body, hooked around her hips and held tight. Then his arms grabbed for her torso and he clipped her chest harness tight to his. They were now locked together at the point midway between their two chutes.
But in contrast to the tandem jump, they were joined face to face, attached via a thick carabiner – a D-shaped metal ring with a spring-loaded clip. Jaeger found the position and the close proximity decidedly uncomfortable, particularly as he was boiling up in the heat – the thick and cumbersome survival suit plus the rest of the HAHO gear serving to roast him alive.
But hell, anything to get them down in one piece.
Using a second carabiner, he locked the parachutes firmly together at the base of their rigging – the narrowest point of each. He then took out a length of Specter paracord – a high-tensile khaki cord about as thick as your average washing line, but with an extraordinary strength. It had a 500-pound breaking strain, but Jaeger doubled it over anyway, just to be certain.
He threaded it twice through a belay device – a climber’s abseiling tool – to provide added friction, tying the upper end on to the parachutes. The rest of the paracord he uncoiled carefully below him, letting it fall the one hundred feet or so to the earth below. Finally, he clipped the belay device on to the carabiner attached to his chest harness, so that he and Narov were attached to the makeshift paracord rope.
They were now hanging in their chutes, whilst at the same time being attached to them independently via the paracord rig that Jaeger had just assembled. Now came the crunch moment: it was time to cut out of their parachutes, and for Jaeger to perform a free abseil, so lowering them to the ground.
Both he and Narov ripped off helmet, masks and goggles, letting them fall to the forest floor. Jaeger was sweating like a pig after all the exertion. He could feel the perspiration running down his face in rivulets, soaking the front of his clothing where he was clipped skin-tight to Narov.
It was like a wet T-shirt competition – only up close and personal – and he felt as if he could trace every minute contour of her body.
‘I sense that you are uncomfortable,’ Narov remarked. Her voice had an odd, matter-of-fact, mechanical ring to it. ‘Such close proximity can be necessary for several reasons. One: practical necessity. Two: to share body warmth. Three: sex. This now is for reason number one. Stay focused on the job.’
Blah, blah, blah, Jaeger thought. Trust me to end up trapped in the jungle with only the ice maiden for company.
‘So, you tricked me into your embrace,’ Narov continued flatly. She pointed upwards. ‘Whatever you next have in mind, I suggest you hurry.’
Jaeger looked where she indicated. Three feet above his head there was a gigantic spider. It was about the size of his hand, and it appeared semi-luminous and silvery in the half-light – its body plump, its legs like eight emaciated fingers groping towards him.
He could see its bulbous, evil red eyes glaring, the chomping moist maw of its jaws moving hungrily. It lifted its front legs, waving them aggressively, as it edged ever closer. Worse still, he could see its fangs – presumably tipped with poison – poised to strike.
He whipped up Narov’s knife, ready to slash it to pieces, but her hand stopped him.
‘Don’t!’ she hissed.
She pulled out her back-up blade and, without bothering to unsheathe it, slid the narrow end beneath the spider’s hairy body and flipped it into the air. It spun around and around, torso glinting as it caught the sunbeams, then tumbled downwards, jaws hissing in anger at having been thwarted.
Narov didn’t take her eyes off the treetops. ‘I kill only when I need to. And when it is wise.’